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A Video Game Sequel That Disappointed Me

I was scrolling through the various articles on my feed and I came across an article written by Cary at Recollections of Play, (check it out if you want a good read!) and I just had this immediate gut reaction to a game that I am currently powering through which fits this perfectly. You may not have wanted someone to answer this question, maybe you meant it as a hypothetical, but I just had to respond.

I don’t normally do these type of things, but I feel like the community I’m apart of, *whether you like it or not*, shouldn’t mind if I answer some of your unintended questions. So thanks Cary for giving me reasons to write today.

Currently I’m playing through Shadow of the Tomb Raider and this game has been a pretty big disappointment.

I really enjoyed the first two installments to this series and actually went so far as to beat them multiple times. I found it to be another Uncharted, but with a female protagonist and a more mythological story. Which is a huge plus for me. I love a good history focused game that has great action moments, a good and relatable protagonist, and beautiful vistas. I really like the upgrade machanic that both games offered and it really fueled me to find all of the hidden treasures as I pursued the best upgrades for my gear. Every tomb felt like a challenge worth enduring and never really over stayed its welcome. The combat was easy to get a hang of and even the story was pretty compelling. With that said…what the heck happened with Shadow?

So far, I’m about 6 hours in and I feel like I have felt every hour. The story is nothing like the previous titles; in that this story is actually hard to follow.

For those that aren’t aware, what I’m about to say is not a spoiler. These are the first few minutes of the game and it has been reported on a few times before the game came out.

Basically, you start in Mexico, as you pursue Tinity and attempt to discover what your father was investigating before he died. You find out that Trinity is looking for the same thing that you are; a key…

You fight your way through their ranks and make it to a spooky tomb first. After some minor puzzle solving, you stumble upon the mythical key that could end the world…or something…also the key is a dagger.

Lara believes that if Trinity gets their hands on this dagger, they will remake the world in their image and destroy it? So she takes the dagger and, in turn, starts the Mayan apocalypse. After causing the death of many innocent people, she decides that she is going to hunt down Trinity and find a box that is suppose to work with the dagger key and I guess save the world.

This might be an ok story on the surface, but they do not execute this very well. The beginning of the story is very fast paced and you really don’t feel like Lara gives a crap about whats going on around her. I understand that they are trying to show a more gritty Lara because of the events of the other game, but she isn’t a monster. Any human being with a heart would at least have some type of conviction if they killed someone, let alone an entire town…and possibly the world.

Aside from the story, I’m also experiencing some major bugs. A few have been game crashing, all of them annoying. I’ve had to unplug my xbox one x a few times from the wall in order to do a hard reboot because the game would not even launch. On top of that, I’ve had audio issues if I had my system in “instant on” mode and tried to boot up the game after turning off my system for awhile.

Personally, I feel like this game should have been a next year release. They should have taken the extra time to really flush out the message they were trying to send and give us a sequel that the fans deserve. I don’t know if the game will get better in the late game, but I’m not holding my breath.

Aw, thanks for the shoutout! I’ve read that this new Tomb Raider game is pretty polarizing; people either *really* like it or *really* don’t. I’ve only played the first one, the reboot, and I liked it well enough. But it didn’t personally make me want to continue with the series. (A little Uncharted burnout may have had something to do with that.) Sorry to hear that this seems like an overall thumbs-down.

I did hear that Shadow of the Tomb Raider was disappointing, which is a shame given how acclaimed its predecessor is.

I’ve played more than a fair share of disappointing sequels, but I’d say one that springs to mind is Tri Force Heroes; it doesn’t even begin to do A Link Between Worlds justice (or the series in general, really).